One-sided Sam/Dean, PG
(one-sided Sam/Dean, 590 words, PG)


They're going somewhere, somewhere important. But the roads are all dust, and gas stations and motels flicker past like the same two landmarks on repeat. Sam doesn't need to think too hard about it anyway; Dean drives, Dean navigates, Dean tells him when it's time to sleep, time to get up. Dean'll get him there, and when he does, Sam will kill whatever it is they find and he'll make it up to Jess.

Jess is all there is to think of really. Her and that long, low breath before the fire comes. It's odd though. He thinks about it because it's all he can dream of – he wakes and thinks about what he's dreamt – but different thoughts start filtering through the cracks the more time he spends with Dean.

These are old thoughts, old memories, and they're older than what happened to Jess. About as welcome too. Because these memories are just more of the badness of being a Winchester. These memories are little reasons why Sam left for college in the first place, why he shouldn't be back, spending every waking hour with Dean, why he's deep-down wrong.

He wakes from dreams of guilt and Jess, and there's Dean, sitting beside him, giving him those concerned looks out of the corner of his eye that Sam's not supposed to notice, and the guilt doesn't stop.

The most frightening thing he can remember from growing up is not the toothless old woman from the shadows or the dog of bone they hunted down in Texas. The most frightening thing was looking at his big brother, bruised from the hunt the night before and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and realising he was just a little bit in love with him.

That was something to run from. That was something you ran from and kept on running.

But now he's back because there's nowhere left to run. It just comes after him, first Dean and then the nightmares. There's no escape in thinking or sleeping. There's only the journey.

Sometimes in the silence, when Dean's too exasperated by Sam's monosyllabic responses to his wisecracks, Sam thinks of what he really wants to talk about with his brother. He needs to ask him some things, because if you can't ask your big brother, you're fucked, right?

He wants to know if Dean's only come back because their father's missing, or if maybe this was just the perfect chance for Dean to drag his Sammy back out onto the road. After all, Dean doesn't need him for this. Dean's a survivor. He'd cope, even with a burnt body of broken bones – he'd cope.

And he really wants to know whether Dean will love him no matter what. Whether Dean will love him if he knew Sam was dreaming of Jess's death before he'd even left her, and whether Dean would love him even if he knew he'd been in his little brother's wet dreams before Sam even knew what they were.

On about the eighth day, he starts almost asking. He'll open his mouth, draw in a breath and Dean's fingers will stop tapping the wheel in time to the pounding bass of the music. Dean waits and when Sam closes his mouth again, he smiles, but it's not a happy smile.

Sam goes back to watching the trees flash past, feeling like he's swallowed down a sob.

Asleep with the girlfriend he let die, or awake with the brother he wants in all the wrong ways: it's one nightmare to another.